They said the robots would come for the burger flippers, but instead they came for the masters of the universe.

Rishi Ganti used to help manage the personal fortunes of hedge fund founders David Siegel and John Overdeck, whose quantitatively driven strategies turned them into billionaires. Ganti, 45, says he’s glimpsed the future of his industry. A wave of coders writing self-teaching algorithms has descended on the financial world, and it doesn’t look good for most of the money managers who’ve long been envied for their multimillion-­dollar bonuses.

He thinks that about 2 percent to 7 percent of the hedge fund industry’s $3 trillion of assets will jump every year from predominantly human oversight to computers.

How long until the computers eliminate all carbon based life forms, seeing us as we see a nasty virus?